Ping flooding (fwd)

Tue Jul 9 23:15:25 UTC 1996

In message <199607091907.AA29463 at jotun.EU.net>, Per Gregers Bilse writes:
> On Jul 9, 14:21, Curtis Villamizar <curtis at ans.net> wrote:
> > The NSS routers allow us to do statistical sampling continuously and
> > the occurance of a source address at an entry point where it does not
> > usually enter can be detected and has in the past been used to
> > followup these sort of attacks after the fact.  Other routers are not
> > capable of doing this but if the offense is repeated, successive
> > monitoring can be set up until the source is isolated.
> > 
> > We have requested the same sort of statistical sampling from Cisco and
> > Bay (and BNR/NSC).  It is a long ways back on the development schedule
>  
> Maybe I'm missing something, but flow switching stats from Ciscos
> should do exactly this:
>  
> SrcIf  SrcIPaddress    DstIf  DstIPaddress    Pr DstP SrcP Pkts B/Pk Active
> Se1/0  194.130.16.17   Se1/6  130.144.65.1    11 0035 0035    2   69    0.0
> Et0/2  193.122.198.1   Se1/1  128.218.14.87   06 0050 0FA3    2   40    0.0
> Se1/5  130.144.65.1    Se1/0  194.130.16.17   11 0035 0035    2   69    0.0
> Se1/1  153.36.40.52    Et0/1  193.74.242.1    06 0413 0050    4   44    9.6
> Se1/5  194.178.24.22   Se1/7  146.228.10.11   06 0407 0050  124   40  207.6
> Se1/7  146.228.10.11   Se1/6  194.178.24.22   06 0050 0405  648  550  673.4
> Se1/5  194.165.95.69   Se1/0  205.216.146.69  06 0430 0050    5  164    6.2
>  
> etc, etc.  Dump, then grep.
>  
> -- 
> ------ ___                        --- Per G. Bilse, Mgr Network Operations Ctr
> ----- /     /  /   __   ___  _/_ ---- EUnet Communications Services B.V.
> ---- /---  /  /  /  /  /__/  /  ----- Singel 540, 1017 AZ Amsterdam, NL
> --- /___  /__/  /  /  /__   /  ------ tel: +31 20 6233803, fax: +31 20 6224657
> ---                           ------- 24hr emergency number: +31 20 421 0865
> --- Connecting Europe since 1982  --- http://www.EU.net  e-mail: bilse at EU.net

I have always been under the impression that Cisco flow switching and
high performance were mutually exclusive if there were too many active
flows as is the case for the major US ISPs at least.

What the RS6000 does is the forwarding cards sample on in 50 packets,
strip all but the headers, pack it into a buffer and send the buffers
to the RS6000 processor for inclusion in histograms.  We can come
close to doing 1:1 sampling but not quite.  The 1:50 has proven just
fine for traffic management and also come in handy for tracking
persistant source address spoofers back to the next provider.

Another difference is with the flow switching, you need to catch them
in the act.  With the sampling and collection, you can call hours
later (days or weeks actually, years if you count going to tape) and
still determine the candidate entry points for the traffic.  I don't
think there is a practical way to get the same sort of historic
archive from the flow switching stats.

Curtis